ONE GOOD THING ABOUT THE BLAGO SCANDAL: IT HAS SERVED TO SHOVE MEDIA ATTENTION FROM SARAH PALIN. But PALINISMS will probably be around for us to laugh at for a long, long time. I only hope the originator of the Palinisms, namely SP herself, will continue to be non-newsworthy.

Sarah Palin lost the election, but she's a winner to a connoisseur of quotations.

The Republican vice presidential candidate and her comedic doppelganger, Tina Fey, took the top two spots in this year's list of most memorable quotes compiled by Fred R. Shapiro.

First place was "I can see Russia from my house!" spoken in satire of Palin's foreign policy credentials by Fey on "Saturday Night Live."

Palin actual quote was: "They're our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."

Palin also made the third annual list for her inability to name newspapers she reads. When questioned by CBS anchor Katie Couric, Palin said she reads "all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years."

Palin's quotes were pivotal, said Shapiro, associate librarian and lecturer in legal research at the Yale Law School who compiles the list.

"This quote helped shape the election results," he said of the Russia quote. "As it sank in the public realized this was someone really, really inexperienced and perhaps lacking in curiosity about the world."

Shapiro issued his Yale Book of Quotations, with about 13,000 entries, two years ago after six years of research. He expects to release the next edition in about five years, but in the meantime plans to issue annual top 10 lists.

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"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman